


Vigils

by Chromat1cs



Series: Basingstoke Diaries [14]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Babysitting, Editor!Remus, M/M, Marauders' Era, Mechanic!Sirius, Post Hogwarts AU, Young Harry, they are such solid Dads (TM)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-16
Updated: 2018-04-16
Packaged: 2019-04-23 12:11:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14332209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chromat1cs/pseuds/Chromat1cs
Summary: His godson is precocious, but Sirius is nothing if not an overgrown child who know how to bargain with Harry for the better part of a weekend. Amid the rampant and wonderful break from normalcy, Sirius and Remus try their hardest to ignore the present for just one more moment at a time.





	Vigils

“Thank you again for doing this—”

“Mummy.”

“—we really appreciate it, James and I—”

“Mummy.”

“—would love to take you out to dinner as well sometime soon, we—”

“Mummy!”

_“Yes,_ darling, what is it?”

Lily blinks and levels her eyes expectantly with Harry, knelt by the hearth in front of her son to straighten his flyaway hair as she rattles off the final goodbye to Sirius. Harry grins wide at her, the gap in his teeth from the one that fell loose last week lending him an air of extra scrappiness.

“I love you,” he declares simply, as if it were the most obvious conclusion in the world. Sirius can’t help but let an amused chuckle trip out of him. 

“Oh, I love you, too,” Lily growls. She squeezes Harry’s lanky little waist in a tickle and presses a barrage of kisses into his forehead as Harry bursts with giggles and scrabbles at his mother’s hands. Lily gives him a meaningful look and smooths Harry’s hair again when she pulls back. “You be good with Uncle Sirius and Remmy, okay?”

The benefits of Lily and James working for different branches of the Ministry have shown themselves in staggered schedules that mean at least one of them is continually home to watch Harry. However, whenever duty calls for those schedules to overlap for a full Friday and Saturday every other month, Harry gets a small vacation—Sirius is always the first to jump at the chance to imbue the more devilish sides of his personality on a tiny version of two of his favorite people.

“We’re going to do heroin,” Sirius says matter-of-factly. Lily glares at him with a raptor’s good humor. 

“What’s heroin?” Harry asks, excited, and Sirius erupts with a cackle at the oblivious wonder on his godson’s face.

“Be good with Remmy,” Lily amends as she kisses Harry on the nose with finality. “Demand the world on a platter from Uncle Sirius.”

Sirius is still chuffed with the dregs of his joke while Lily stands to hug him farewell—she doesn’t forget to pinch his cheek with the vise of revenge in her manicured nails. “Tell Remus thank you for us too, I mean it about dinner.”

“We’ll find a night,” Sirius replies, theatrically rubbing his wounded cheek as he kisses Lily goodbye on her own left.

“No hard drugs,” Lily wheedles back. She situates herself in the fireplace and pins Sirius with a pointed look. 

“Fine, we’ll just throw rocks at traffic then.” Sirius scoops Harry up in his arms and waves to Lily, beaming with jaunty sass as Harry waves too. Sirius can tell Lily is violently tamping down the desire to show Sirius exactly what to shove and where in front of the fragile innocence of her 6-year-old. 

“See you Sunday, I love you _both,”_ she says, blowing a kiss on the heels of the complex and hidden syllable of _You Watch Your Arse, Sirius Black_ that she’s gotten so good at firing off since becoming a mother. She dashes the Floo powder with a tidy poof and is off in a brilliant emerald fizzle, leaving the flat still and peaceful with an extra Potter left in it. 

“Have you had breakfast?” Sirius asks Harry. The little boy is heavier on his hip since he last visited— _Growing like a bloody bean and getting just as gangly, eh?_

“I had a toast and some sausage.”

“Might you want...” Sirius hums, looking conspiratorially around the living room before raising an eyebrow at Harry; “...a doughnut?”

“Yes please!” Harry crows, his tiny trainers waving in the air as he kicks his feet excitedly. Sirius swoops the boy into the kitchen like a parcel, smiling to himself with glee at Harry’s giggles. The ounce of sense in the back of his mind warns him to be quieter; Remus is still sleeping off the pain from the moonrise three nights ago. But the refusal to think of hurtful things in the midst of his godson blots it out.

Sirius plops Harry down in one of the kitchen chairs and charms the dozen box of doughnuts over the center of the kitchen table. Harry looks at them, little hands folded tight in his lap, with the discerning eye of a boy who loves chocolate very much but is trying just as hard to have good manners. Sirius grins wickedly at him. 

“Do you want one?”

“Yes please!”

“Do you want _two?”_

Harry’s eyes go wide, as if Sirius had just told him they were storing a unicorn in the spare room. He nods quickly and Sirius opens the box with a flourish; the pastries inside might as well have been gold bars with the way Harry stares. “Have at them,” Sirius says, an air of intensity underscoring the bid for his godson to grab at the universe in his tiny fists and never let go. 

“Thank you!” Harry cries. He takes up the two chocolate-covered doughnuts closest to him and arranges them briefly on his plate before biting rapaciously into the first one. Sirius takes up a maple-iced one of his own and sets aside Remus’ regular cake doughnut for whenever he wakes.

With the accidental psychic acuity of all children under 6 years old, Harry looks up at Sirius with excitement brimming in his huge green eyes. “Where’s Remmy?” he asks with his mouth still full.

“He’s still sleeping,” Sirius explains with a subtle pang in his veins. “He stayed up very, very late past his bedtime a couple days ago and has had to recover.” _That’s to say nothing of the stitches—_ Sirius clenches a fist under the table and forces himself to shut away a jolting memory, the agony in having to overcome his own exhaustion to sew up a furious gash on Remus’ forearm as dawn crawled through the windows. Each moon has had something progressively worse to offer for the past five months. 

Harry looks over his shoulder at the closed bedroom door before turning back to Sirius. “Does he want a doughnut too?” he asks in a loud whisper. Sirius’ inner tension breaks with adoration for Harry’s sweetness, and he taps the plate with the cake doughnut. 

“Way ahead of you, Potter. How’s mummy and daddy?”

Harry regales Sirius with fragmented stories of the goings-on at the Potter household—James lost his glasses on Tuesday, only to find them in the _loo_ of all places; Lily made chicken for dinner on Sunday; Harry read a book about a caterpillar and his griffon friend just yesterday afternoon, of which he admitted after some prodding that James actually did most of the reading while Harry just looked at the pictures. In the middle of a rollicking rendition of the David Bowie song Lily sang him the other day, wrong lyrics and all, the bedroom door opens quietly. Sirius nearly points to it with Padfoot’s instincts twinging violently inside him. Harry follows the shift in Sirius’ attention and breaks into a smile the size of Saturn. 

“Remmy!” Harry cries, doughnuts forgotten. He scrambles down off his chair and races over to Remus as the man emerges around the jamb. Remus smiles, bleary and beautiful in his dressing gown, as he reaches down to ruffle Harry’s hair when the boy attaches himself to Remus’ left shin. 

“I thought I heard a mouse in here,” Remus teases. Sirius’ insides twist with a war of adoration and sadness to catalogue the stretch of white gauze peeking out beneath his sleeve, taped soundly across Remus’ arm where his stitches have been hidden to heal. 

“I’m not a mouse!” Harry insists, brimming with joy. It seems, Sirius feels as he watches, that nobody in the flat is safe from the magnetic pull of loving Remus Lupin to his bones and back these days besides Remus himself. 

“Aye, maybe a rabbit?” Remus continues to play along as he takes Harry’s hand and walks them both back to the breakfast table. He reaches Sirius and kisses him good morning, soft and unsaid before murmuring a “Morning, love,” so gently that Sirius nearly hears the weakness in it. 

Mornings lately have been an olympian feat of not dissolving into the breakfast plate. Sirius holds it together if only because his godson is glittering with unbridled, boyish joy just across the table. 

“No, I want to be a tiger!” Harry announces. He claws his fingers, smudged with chocolate and lets out his best imitation of a roar. Sirius laughs despite himself. 

“Did your daddy take you to the zoo again?” He asks as he pushes himself up to set the kettle boiling. 

“Yes, I saw tigers and lions but no manticores. I wanted to see manticores, but mummy said ‘No manticores in this zoo, darling.’ Remmy, where are the manticores if they aren’t at the zoo?” Sirius had forgotten how Harry’s train of thought speeds along without brakes. 

“Greece,” Remus says matter-of-factly. He bites into his own doughnut and, catching Sirius’ wordless point to the kettle, nods the affirmative for a cup of tea. 

“Okay, let’s go there after doughnuts,” Harry concludes with a decisive nod. Remus laughs; Sirius nearly drops the mugs he’s taken from the cabinet at the unexpected burst of lightness in the flat. 

“We can’t go there now, it’s very far away,” Remus explains. The sparkle of freshness in his voice is maddeningly lovely.

“Yes we can,” Harry insists, “daddy can Apparnate, can’t you?”

“Not to a different country, sorry,” Sirius says over his shoulder.

“That’s silly,” Harry mumbles to himself. Sirius pours the boiled water and plants a jokingly loud kiss on the crown on Harry’s head. 

“I agree, we should take it up with the ministry,” he says. Sirius sets Remus’ tea in front of him and presses a decidedly more purposeful kiss to Remus’ temple. Remus reaches up to stroke once at Sirius’ chin in thanks before he takes a careful sip of from the cup. Sirius loops and arm around Remus’ shoulder from his stand behind the man and pins Harry with an eager look. “What do you want to do today besides look for manticores?”

“There’s a park down by the water, would you want to go play there?” Remus offers. Harry nods eagerly. 

“May I play Aurors with the other boys?” Harry pushes his glasses up his nose, excitement clearly bursting at his seams, but Sirius shakes his head. 

“Sorry, boyo, there are mostly Muggles in this town. It’s not like home in Godrick’s.” Harry crinkles in his nose in confusion.

“Why d’you live here then, if you can’t do magic things?”

“We can do magic here at home,” Sirius explains, “and other wizards live in the neighborhood, but we just can’t do spells or play Aurors outside where there are also Muggles.”

“You know my mum was a Muggle, right Harry?” Remus hums as he takes a sip of tea. 

“I know, you showed me a picture once. She looks normal.” Harry nods solemnly for his remembrance of Hope’s simple and staggering beauty as though she had been an outlier on the definition of Muggles in his incredible little brain, who might walk around with an extra set of arms.

Remus laughs to himself again as he bites into his doughnut and Sirius feels weeks of stress melt away from his bones at the sound. Harry tucks into his own plate again, encouraged by Remus’ contentment. The essence of a young James emanates from every move the boy makes, from the way he reaches across the table for a napkin to the tidy little swipes he makes across his mouth to smudge away the chocolate there. It’s amazing, really, how Lily’s genetics only managed to win the territory of her son’s eyes. 

After a peaceful breakfast, Remus excuses himself for a shower and a shave while Sirius clears the dishes. “Shall we see to the park soon?” he calls from the sink to Harry, who is currently wandering the sitting room and staring up at Remus’ bookshelves in subtle bafflement. “I know you wanted to play Aurors, but there are still slides and swings and lots of trees to climb.”

“Mummy doesn’t like it when I climb trees,” Harry says over his shoulder. “Who’s Doo-stow-yev...yevvy-ski?”

“A big Russian bear,” Sirius replies. “Mummy doesn’t have to know about the trees.”

“Really?!” Harry turns from his deciphering squint with and expression quite close to what Sirius imagines would be the same response to having said _Harry, I’ve decided to give you all of my chocolate frogs for the next century._

Sirius smirks and twirls his wand around one finger; “Uncle Sirius has different rules—stick ‘em up!” He chews out the words through a jagged American Western accent and, finished charming the dishes clean, points the butt-end of his wand at Harry like a cowboy pistol and pretends to fire it. Harry shrieks with glee and rushes at Sirius, throwing his arms around his godfather’s knees and hugging him fervently.

“Let’s go to the park!” he announces. Sirius stores his wand back in his belt loop and hoists Harry up to hold him with one arm before he nods the affirmative.

“We’ll just wait for Remmy and then we’ll be off for grand adventures, my good sir.”

Sirius helps Harry into his neon-blue windbreaker, a monstrous little thing sure to be of Lily’s doing out of those garish Muggle clothing catalogues she adores so much. Remus emerges from the bed room freshly-bathed and looking worlds more awake in a clean jumper and jeans, and Sirius smiles hopelessly at the lovely picture of it.

“Remmy, will you help me climb a tree?” Harry asks him.

“Oh, I think we’ll let Uncle Sirius handle that one,” Remus amends. He pulls a book from the top of a stack on his desk, glances at the cover, and tucks it under his arm with approval. “I’m no good with trees.”

“But you’re taller than Uncle Sirius,” Harry insists, “please?”

“He is most definitely not taller than me, the www _www_ ell-dressed dandy he is,” Sirius blurts, stumbling to cover _wanker_ so as not to send Harry home with a new word to bring down Lily’s wrath on Sirius’ habits. Remus covers a grin with the small book in his hand as he moves over to the coatrack. Sirius ruffles Harry’s hair and meets his big, inquisitive eyes with a smile. “I’ll help you climb some, promise. Want to get your shoes on?”

Harry sets to his shoes, and Sirius takes up his leather jacket next to Remus who is currently winding his scarf in a chic hang about his neck.

“How are you feeling?” Sirius asks, voice low, out of earshot from Harry as the boy pulls on his little velcro-fasten trainers on the sofa. 

“I’m fine, Pads, don’t dote,” Remus assures him gently. 

“If you want to stay home, I can—“

“We can take him to the park without me keeling over, I just won’t chase him ‘round the swing sets,” Remus says with a hint of irritation. “I’m bringing something to read, the weather is lovely, it will be nice.” Remus kisses Sirius on the nose as he zips up his coat, and then he reaches forward to zip up Sirius’ coat as well without giving Sirius a chance to protest further. “Ready?” he calls to Harry.

“Ready!” Harry leaps up from the sofa and runs over to take Remus’ hand, almost vibrating out of his skin with excitement.

Shutting the door to the flat behind them all and watching the pair descend the walkup stairs in front of him, a part of Sirius briefly envies Harry’s ignorance to the complexities of hardships roiling within the man guiding him along.

—

The trio make a full day of the good weather at the park, picnicking with lunch made from odds and ends from the corner grocer at the end of the block. Harry expends the boundless energy of boyhood, rocketing up and down trees like a limitless pixie interspersed with bouts of rest in which he sits on Remus’ knee to be read to from the slim volume of Verlaine. He demands renditions both French and English, listening intently to try and make sense of both languages while Remus traces the reading line on the page so Harry can at least follow the shape of the letters. Sirius wishes for a camera. 

“I like those words,” Harry announces just after 3:00. He pushes himself up to stand from the bench they’ve appropriated and picks his nose boldly as he shrugs. “But I don’t know what the story is.”

“They’re poems,” Remus tells him for the fourth time. “They tell a very abstract story. Symbols, metaphors, all sorts of little secrets in between the words.”

“Like spies? What’s ‘abstract?’” Harry squints up at Remus through the lowering light poking through the tree branches above them. 

“Sort of. ‘Abstract’ is when it’s all divided up like puzzle pieces, and it’s up to every different person who reads the poem to put it together for themselves.” Remus adjusts his reading glasses and Sirius aches with the recurring daydream to see him at the head of a literature classroom. 

“That sounds hard,” Harry says with decisiveness. 

“You’re not wrong,” Remus agrees. Apparently satisfied, Harry to turns to Sirius and smiles. 

“Can we climb another tree?” Harry has been amazingly good at not scuffing his clothes or scraping himself on the branches, despite his propensity to forget that digging for bogies in public is less than encouraged by his parents.

Sirius lifts the boy onto his shoulders, peering up at him as Harry giggles from the newfound height; “Lead on, Potter!”

It isn’t long before the shadows start crawling long across the grass and the light begins fading. The boy and the two boys-at-heart hoof back to the flat, Harry perched on Sirius’ shoulders again to grab at low-hanging branches over the sidewalk and release them over the street like confetti. They pick up curry for dinner—too much of it, extra spice on Harry’s and the new regular of extra mild for Remus’ lest it give him a headache again.

His encroaching weakness shows itself in strange ways. He and Sirius have to take extra care lately to be sure they remember all the peculiarities.

Around the little kitchen table at least, it’s easy to put worry out of the equation with Harry pretending his silverware can talk and making up stories about his vegetables.

“I keep asking mummy for a puppy, but daddy always tells me ‘Wait until you’re 11, then you can get an owl!’” Harry exclaims eventually, dropping his voice to mimic James’ I’m Apparently A Father tone. Sirius cracks with laughter at the accuracy in the impression—the crease of his forehead, the purse of his lips, augmented by the nearly identical pair of glasses. 

“Do you want a puppy, or a dog?” Remus asks, looking at Sirius with a delightful spark in his eyes. “Because I think Uncle Sirius can fill one of those roles free and clear.”

Sirius catches the spark in Remus’ eyes, teasing and challenge all in one, limned with the exhaustion of another full day lived—You’ve done this one, Moony, just give me a lifetime more of them. That’s all I ask. Sirius stands up; whether to shake off the begging of his inner voice or for the basic joy of being rakish he cannot know. 

“Dog?” He asks Harry simply as he turns to his beaming godson. 

“Yes!” Harry cries, his feet swinging excitedly where they clear the floor by half a foot on the kitchen chair.

Sirius closes his eyes and looks inward, dredging up the warmth of his Animagus like bellows to a furnace. He dives into the comfort of canine shape, black fur pushing in over his clothes and covering him while his body shifts and pulls itself into the long lines of Padfoot. His awareness fuzzes over with the normal scrim of dog-brain—present, but overtaken for the most part by instinct rather than direct consciousness. Were he even more reckless than he already is, Sirius would likely spend the majority of his time here to escape the press of worry surrounding Remus. But three or four times a month is plenty. 

Harry has adored Padfoot since before he could even shape his mouth around the word “Dog,” and so he and Sirius take to mayhem like the old companions they are. The two play on the kitchen floor and tear through the sitting room in little circles, dinner forgotten, cohorts in mischief like nothing else in world could possibly matter more than Harry trying to catch Padfoot’s tail or ride on his back like a horse into battle.

At some point, Remus has charmed the dishes clean and sits himself in the armchair to watch with loving amusement. Padfoot darts over to him then periodically, panting and thoroughly happy, to be scratched behind his ears in his favorite place whenever Harry throws himself on the sofa to catch his breath. 

After nearly half an hour, Padfoot and Harry are both sprawled across the rug heaving with ecstatic exhaustion. 

“Knackered?” Remus asks from his seat, another book in his lap assumed after a time to while his evening. Sirius eases his way back to the fore of his mind then, up through the cozy mutt-thoughts of _Happy, Run, Harry, Rem, Good._ The shiver of arrival that chains down his spine after he finishes transforming makes Harry giggle at him, so Sirius wiggles his arms and legs where he lies for a sillier effect.

“Hallo!” Harry exclaims, his cheek pressed against the rug to press his glasses askew over and expression of abject adoration. Sirius’ heart melts more than a little bit—he loves this bloody child. 

“Speaking of knackered,” Sirius says, “what time is it?” He glances at the clock and pretends to be taken by violent surprise. “It’s almost half-past seven, Merlin’s pants! We seem to have barreled right past your bedtime, Potter.”

Harry’s face flips immediately into a pout, so quickly that Sirius can’t hold back a chuckle. “Sorry, ducky, we already spoiled mum’s directions enough. Want to go brush teeth?”

“Okay...” Harry pushing himself dramatically into a sit, glowering the whole way up. 

“Want help?” Remus asks from the chair. Harry scoffs and puts his hands on his hips as if Remus had just called him a numpty. 

“I’m _6 years old,_ Remmy,” he says pointedly. Remus raises his eyebrows. 

_“Well_ then, carry on.” Remus bows his head solemnly at the open bathroom door, at which Harry nods with administrative approval. He marches into the bath and shuts the door solidly, giving Remus leave to break into an unguarded grin. He turns to Sirius happily, the sun through the clouds—Sirius’ heart clenches sweetly. “Precocious,” Remus murmurs with an undeniable hint of pride. 

“He gets it from me, everyone knows arrogance passes through the godfather,” Sirius sighs through a stretch, sitting himself up on his heels and moving over beside the couch. Remus rolls his eyes

“Because you’re so exceedingly blood-related, of course, how could I forget,” he says drolly. Sirius shuffles over to the armchair on his knees and plants a soft kiss to Remus’ left-hand knuckles. Without looking up from the page, Remus shifts the hand to cup Sirius’ chin and draws a gentle thumb across Sirius’ bottom lip. “Good day, yeah?”

“Yeah.” Sirius kisses the pad of Remus’ thumb, looking up at the contentment in Remus’ profile from where he kneels. The corners of Remus’ eyes are bunched in concentration, his glasses doubtless left on one of their nightstands; Remus’ staunch refusal to acknowledge the decline in anything lately has him laboring over more than reading these days, whether it be mustering up the strength to leave the flat or writing to his father or even being able to steal any scrap of sleep at all—

“Yo’r baf’tub i’ weird.”

Sirius’ train of thought derails as both he and Remus look to the bathroom door, swung open to reveal Harry with a mouthful of toothpaste and an accusatory finger pointed at the claw-footed monstrosity against the south wall of the bath. “Why i’ it so _big?”_ The boy demands as he saws away at his teeth with the bright orange toothbrush.

“Dog baths,” Remus says without missing a beat. Harry, mollified, shuts the door again to continue his routine as if it were the most normal thing in the world to inquire about bathtubs.

After a few beats of silence in the sitting room, Sirius finds he’s really quite tired of brooding.

“Why _is_ it so big?” He asks. “Who lived here before us?”

“I could ask Mrs. Dacus, but my money is on horny giants.” Remus still doesn’t look up from his page, but Sirius sees the glimmer of devilry behind his pupils that had made Sirius first wonder _Whatever goes on in that pretty head of his?_ thirteen years ago toward the end of a long study night in the library. The man’s emotional fortitude in the face of reality is truly enviable.

“Horny giants and a bag of chips,” Sirius says with finality as he vaults to his feet and places a noisy kiss right at the junction of Remus’ shoulder and neck.

_“Aaagh!_ You _fff_ ffantastic gentleman,” Remus yelps, twitching with surprise and leaping to obscure the intent of his words at such volume to be heard by little ears through a closed door. He scowls lovingly at a triumphant Sirius at rubs absently at the loved patch of skin. “Are you going to stay up and read with me?”

Sirius leans in for a proper kiss, along the pale scar across Remus’ mouth that ends on his lips, he smiles into it. “I could be persuaded.”

—

Harry demands three picture books read aloud with all the proper character voices before he allows himself to be tucked comfortably into the pull-out couch in the spare room. Despite all his yearning to stay up a bit later, he’s snoring softly when Sirius cracks the doors to check on him twenty minutes later.

Sirius listens to the radio on low volume for another hour and pours himself a shallow drink, whiling away a quiet evening with a rare thrum of peace beating behind his heart. He and Remus say very little with their feet tangled between them on the sofa, Remus assuming his side of it instead of the armchair after Sirius had nested into it. It feels almost like they can forget the ever-present march of time like this.

But Sirius knows when to let sleep take over and let his mind stop churning for a few hours. As Sirius had washed up, kissed Remus goodnight, and gently shut the door to the low light of the hallway, Remus had still been awake in the sitting room lost in someone else’s words. Sirius, ever similar to the smallest Potter, is asleep in less than half an hour.

The mattress shifts after some unknown bed of time and rousts Sirius from the depths of a cloudy dream, unseen things flittering away behind his eyelids like fragments of glass as he pulls himself up through consciousness. He blinks in the bedroom’s dark, reaching out with one arm to welcome Remus into the tuck of the covers. Sirius’ body, warmed by the sheets, slots automatically against the marginal cool of Remus’ skin to curl around him like an overcoat. 

“Hallo,” Sirius murmurs into the back of Remus’ neck. Remus turns himself carefully to face Sirius, his features sketched with shadows in the waning moonlight through the window. Sirius searches out with his fingers and runs a gentle touch along the bandage on Remus’ arm. “Feeling alright?”

“Tired,” Remus yawns, “but I’m lucky Harry behaves. We could be a lot more exhausted right now.”

Sirius hums a vague affirmative and kisses him in lieu of having to unearth deeper emotions. Remus is immediately privy to the strategy and pulls back after responding in kind for a moment. 

“What’s got you, Pads,” he whispers sweetly. 

“You,” Sirius replies, plain and pained as he does in the safety of their bed some nights when he feels the preemptive loss a bit deeper than normal. “I like—being parental. With you. Even thought it isn’t really real.”

Remus strokes his cheek with a familiar curl of his fingers. “Of course it’s real, he’s your godson.”

“You know what I mean.”

Remus sighs, light imperceptible as a shudder, and traces a pattern back and forth across the crest of Sirius’ cheekbone. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” Sirius gathers him close, buries his face in the warmth of Remus’ shoulder to breathe him in. “None of it is your fault,” chanted once into the freckled skin, the mantra of Nowadays as Remus declines on this long, sloping grade of existence. 

“I know. I’m just sorry I’m going to have to miss out on things like this someday.” Remus’ candor has teeth that gnash invisibly around Sirius’ neck. For a moment, Sirius can’t breathe. He still can’t get used to thinking about life in those terms. So he doesn’t. 

“Come here, love.” Sirius reaches out, fingertips diving into the dark as though he might feel its fibers sliding between them, to gather Remus close and kiss him dearly—the way they used to kiss in the Shrieking Shack, with that hint of desperation for the hastening fact of losing the precious stasis of dawn. They stand to lose much more than morning now. Sirius kisses him with the apologetic undertow of a wave who does not want to crash. 

“I love you,” Remus murmurs, twisting his own fingers into Sirius’ hair and pulling him close—pressing against Sirius’ thigh, _there,_ the warm insistence of unsaid escapism; the language of their bodies, however tired or in whichever stage of disrepair, that has always said more than words could hope to. Sirius reaches down to touch him, softly, coaxing from Remus a sigh of breath past his own lips that he drinks like courage. 

Sirius strokes at Remus with deliberate tenderness, pouring kisses down to his tongue in a steady stream. Remus is quiet, subtle but eager to receive with the slight upward arch of his hips and the auspicious tugs at Sirius’ hair. Remus pulls away from their kiss to breathe against Sirius’ neck and clutch at his shoulders, steadying himself as Sirius fosters the mounting coil of ardor inside him. 

“Your mouth,” Remus breathes with another one of Sirius’ slow, perfectly-gripped downstrokes. “Please.”

“Only because you asked nicely,” Sirius whispers back. He kisses down Remus’ jaw and moves soundlessly to kneel on the floor beside their bed, careful to avoid the floorboard that tends to creak. He guides Remus’ body to the edge of the mattress and kisses a path up his left thigh from his knee to the hinge of his hip. He pauses there to glance up at Remus—eyes shut tight, biting down hard on his bottom lip, fingers twined around the sheets in half-thought fists. Almost undone. Almost forgetting how he hurts. Sirius blocks out the white loom of the gauze on Remus’ arm and, closing his own eyes against the insides of his shearing heart, brings Remus devoutly into his mouth.

Sirius takes his sweet time stringing Remus along, knowing all the best places on which to focus and pull away just before Remus rounds his crest of return. Remus’ silence speaks volumes in the building quiver of his leg muscles, the headiness of deep breaths through his nose, the subtle hiss of the bedcovers beneath his body shifting ever so slightly as he searches for release at Sirius’ behest. After a handful of minutes Sirius eases deep to drag his tongue in a long stripe from Remus’ base to his twitching crown, and he feels the telltale spasm of arrival sing out from Remus’ core. 

_That’s it, love;_ Sirius looks up at Remus again and their gazes lock like flint on steel. Ever electric, this moment hovering on the blade’s edge of reality, is this strange and painful paradise all just a dream? Will they wake up in separate beds on the opposite side of the world after all these years once the thread snaps? Remus’ breath hitches like half of a sob and Sirius begs it with his eyes to _Come for me, Remus._

_“Oh—”_ Remus presses his right hand to the side of Sirius’ head, gathering the dark hair there in a clench of reins. Sirius shuts his own eyes and doubles down on his ministrations. “Sirius, I’m c—ah _h, fuck,_ I’m coming,” Remus whispers, his voice breaking as Sirius laves his tongue in concentrated whorls on the underside of Remus’ tip where he likes it best. Remus spills after one final gasp in a series of stuttering pulses, and Sirius closes his lips around him to bring him off all the way in unbroken and quiet bliss.

Action spent, Sirius rises and wipes at the corner of his lips with a thumb before kissing the crook of Remus’ collarbone. Remus draws deep breath from his sprawl on his back, disheveled; overturned; thoroughly flushed in the way that has always been his favorite. Sirius’ vocabulary stops short with mental descriptions when he feels his own arousal twitch—he almost moves to will it away, but Remus sees it first.

“I’m sorry I don’t have the energy to be fucked right now,” Remus pants, hoarse with refractory haze, “I really do want to but I think I might break in half.”

Sirius smirks despite the pang in his guts. “Plenty of time for that later,” he replies simply. Remus shifts up on his elbow, wincing slightly, and pulls Sirius into a kiss before Sirius can protest the effort.

“Come on then,” Remus murmurs in his ear after a moment, “take care of yourself. Can’t fall asleep like that.”

Sirius is never surprised at Remus’ ability to turn his abject arousal into complete, singleminded bloody need. Remus Lupin is undeniably sexy with all of his quirks and penchants and, perhaps above all else, obliviousness to his mundanities that have always driven Sirius mad-hot with desire. So Sirius is not shocked by the surge in his blood at Remus’ behest. He expects it. But the violent pulse of protective ferocity that rises up beside it at the sound of the raw exhaustion in Remus’ beckoning—that cuts deeply. It’s a strange combination. Sirius does not dwell on the anomaly. 

Remus curls up beside Sirius and passes inveigling kisses onto the blushing skin of his neck as Sirius reaches down to close a hand around himself. His eyes flutter shut, grey-blue closing to the pearly dark of the bedroom, and he focuses on the inescapable magnetism of Remus pulling at his universe with every perfect press of his lips.

“Just like that,” Remus directs, filthy and demure all at once to nip softly at Sirius’ earlobe, _Fucking hell, how did I ever get so lucky;_ Remus reads him like the books shelved seven feet high in their sitting room, knows every twist of Sirius’ wrist like the next line of bodily dialogue, commands him even when Sirius’ isn’t inside him or vice-lovely-fucking-versa— _Merlin alive,_ Sirius is lost in it, is getting close, feels it like embers. He will be utterly lost without Remus someday.

Someday.

Sirius lets a small groan escape him as he increases his pace to blot out the roar of thought. Determined to destroy the disaster in the back of his mind, always a threat, always barbed and primed, Sirius focuses on nothing but the present second. Remus has a thumb over one of Sirius’ nipples and is moving in lazy little circles that go straight to the burgeoning dam of pleasure in Sirius’ knotted belly. Remus is warm. Remus is alive. Remus is detailing in an exquisite whisper exactly how lovely Sirius’ technique is to him—“That’s the way you touch yourself whenever we’re apart, isn’t it? How many times have you said my name when you come thinking of me?”

“Every time,” Sirius gasps.

“Say my name,” Remus requests, the feather of a whisper.

“Remus— _ah,”_ Sirius furrows his brow with helpless surrender as he feels his internal pillars of arousal buckling beneath their load.

“Again.”

_“Remus—!”_ Sirius’ murmur hews on a pant as his air goes short. _Almost there, fucking almost—_

Remus interprets Sirius’ response with expert knowing and pulls him into a deep kiss as the heft of finality arcs up through Sirius’ body with a heave. Sirius holds in a cry but finishes hard, roping almost up to his chest on the first spasm with the force of it. He wants to shout with the roiling emotion of it all but he tamps it down, clenching his jaw and reveling in the ebbing sensation as the aftershocks shake their way through his muscles like searching ranks of field scouts. 

“I love you,” Sirius says eventually up at the ceiling, desperately, surprising himself with the roughness in his voice. He shouldn’t feel like crying, and yet here he is.

“I’m yours,” Remus replies softly, still tucked against his side and quickly growing drowsy. Sirius senses the prickle of tears behind his eyes as the postcoital mist begins to clear away, and he doesn’t know how to stop it. He will never know how. Remus has been the only sentinel to hold vigil over Sirius’ tears for more than a decade now, and the prospect of having to cope alone suddenly feels like too much at once. _You’re mine,_ Sirius’ inner voice repeats, _but how do I learn to lose you?_

Addled by adoration and grief all at once, Sirius allows himself the luxury of breaking down.

—

The next morning is slow and pleasant in a quiet sort of way. The two men take their tea and coffee with the paper divided up between them, again with few words spoken but tender understanding surging like a brook. Sleep, at least for Sirius, had been deep and dreamless after weeping into the comfort of Remus’ shoulders until he couldn’t keep his eyes open. 

Harry wakes just after 9 o’clock still in his sleeping shirt with his glasses on crooked, determined to seize the day like a tiny black-haired Horace; “Good morning! I would like breakfast and then we‘ll play outside, please.”

_Thank Morgana for children who don’t yet know the fucking smack of grief._

Over a needlessly large but entirely welcome breakfast Harry details a dream of a shiny blue stag, “Like the one mummy painted on the wall in my room,” visiting him in a very exciting saga that went everywhere and nowhere at once. As Sirius watches his godson over the rim of his coffee cup, he envies the boy’s ability to get lost in his own imagination. Sirius’ dreams lately are mostly deep and hulking things—leviathans he can’t divine for their massiveness that clouds his vision in those subconscious depths. He would give much for something as simple as a visit from his father’s patronus, even if it meant hexing the iridescent raven to kingdom come and back. 

“Harry, what say you to helping with the motorbike?” Sirius proposes later as he clears the dishes with a showy gout of glitter alongside the pink twist of his magic, ever intent to make Harry believe he’s truly made of stardust. Harry lights up like a sparkler.

“Can I ride it?”

_“No,”_ Remus cuts in immediately from the armchair. “Your mum would make Uncle Sirius eat dirt for a month if he lets you ride that bike, Harry.”

Harry pouts and looks pleadingly up at Sirius, who pouts right back but winks and nods silently. Harry ruins the doomed attempt at secrecy by giggling.

“Sirius,” Remus intones with heavy warning. He doesn’t look up from the crossword in his hands, but Sirius knows that arch of his eyebrow means _You Watch Your Sculpted Marble Arse, Love._

“Fine,” Sirius sniffs, “but Harry gets to play with all the tools.”

If Remus protests again, it goes unheard beside Harry’s cheers as Sirius lifts him onto his shoulders and out the front door. 

Luckily the day is lovelier than it was yesterday, so neither of the boys need to wear a jacket. Sirius drags the bike out of the alley and onto the rickety patch of flagstones in their little back courtyard. It’s as good a place as any to work on mechanics when the weather agrees, Mort’s shop being best but only when it’s empty enough to ply Sirius’ special brand of elbow grease mixed with magic. 

“What’s this one for?”

Harry asks after every piece of hardware he passes to Sirius from the great metal toolbox open beside the kickstand of the bike, and Sirius is more than happy to detail them for him. “This one is a socket wrench.”

“I thought _that_ one was a wrench,” Harry says as be points to the allen wrench on the grass by the exhaust tube. 

“Yes,” Sirius says simply around a grunt as he frees the cover panel beside the rear wheel well with one last twist. Harry sighs dramatically.

“Tools are very confusing,” he announces. Sirius chuckles to himself. 

“That’s why I combine mine with magic.” For show alongside the necessity of tuning it, Sirius pops out one of the engine fuses—bespoke by him for the modified fit, welded from an old scrap length of aluminum last summer. It shimmers with the gold residue of a lasting charm that allows a host of them to power the bike without fuel, reflecting off of Harry’s glasses as the boy peers closely at it.

“Can it fly?” Harry asks, the question wondrous in the tone of asking if a baby hippogriff is real or not.

“Maybe someday,” Sirius replies as he updates the charm with wordless prods of his wandtip, “but for now I just need her running properly in time for summer.”

“What’s in summer?”

“Beautiful weather for riding! Maybe you can come along in a few weeks if we keep it safe from Mummy and Remmy, eh?” Sirius palms the fuse and pulls a ridiculous face, which launches Harry into agreeable laughter.

Sirius revels in the lightness of his spirit for nearly an hour, Harry a fine assistant when he isn’t chasing crickets in the grass or picking cobbled handfuls of flowers that also double as swords to fight the imaginary pixie scourge. 

“Harry,” Sirius calls over his shoulder, both hands greasy and occupied and becoming increasingly ungainly as the tune-up requires finer and finer motor skills, “could you pass me that ratchet? The one that looks like something from Mummy and Daddy’s kitchen?”

“Yes!” Harry shouts in the middle of a long monologue to himself about how his army needs to rescue the baby unicorns hiding in the trees. Sirius smiles as he peers closer at the mechanics before him. He loves the background noise of the prattling little imaginings of such an unfettered mind. The ratchet thumps down into the grass beside him and Sirius turns to grab it and perhaps smudge some warpaint onto Harry’s cheeks with the residue on his fingers; “Tha—“

The ratchet sits alone on the ground. Harry is clear across the courtyard, crouched beside a patch of roses to look closely into the tangled bushel. Sirius furrows his brow. “Did you throw the ratchet? Good aim, Potter.”

“No,” Harry says as he looks over at Sirius as if Sirius had just suggested that he eat one of the rosebuds, “I gave it you.”

Sirius’ pulse quickens suddenly, the abstract of his brain flying wide to grasp at scraps of possibility. He sits back on his heels and wipes a strand of hair from his forehead before pointing at a discarded spring in the small pile of junk bits he doesn’t plan on transfiguring into new parts. “Could you give me that spring there? The big one, the one that’s been scorched.”

“Okay,” Harry sings, attention back on the infinitely more interesting rosebush. Sirius’ eyes go wide as he watches the spring glow blue, wriggle up into the air in a wobbly arc, and deposit itself beside his knee. He has to try for words several time before his tongue works properly.

“Have—you been doing magic lately, Harry?” Sirius asks his godson, trying not to make what is certainly a big deal into a A Very Big Deal lest Harry think he’s in trouble. Not five days ago, Lily had detailed over tea how she was debating getting Harry _Checked, by one of those new-age magical therapists; James thinks it’s a terrible idea, I know it’s silly, but I just need to know if he’s going to have any ability or not._

“I dunno how, silly,” Harry says as he prods at one of the rose stems with a blunt stick. “Daddy always says I’m ‘still waiting.’”

“Could you pass me another scrap, one of those screws?” Sirius asks, ignoring the denial. His heart hammers with excitement as he watches the second piece of metal float over and rest itself neatly in the grass. 

“When is the bike done?” Harry asks as he pops up into a stand, dusting off his little hands on his jeans and squinting, oblivious, at Sirius in the sunlight. 

“You’re doing magic,” Sirius replies without preamble. Harry screws up his face in confusion. 

“I don’t have a wand,” he says with a cadence he definitely learned from Lily that says I’m speaking more slowly so your tiny developing mind can grasp this really very simple concept.

“You—it doesn’t always need a wand, it’s magic, Harry, you’re doing magic!” Sirius explains. His expression breaks with a wide grin, excitement infectious. Twisting to look up at the half-open window on the fourth floor, Sirius draws a deep breath of the spring air. “Remus!”

The window slides all the way open and Remus stick his head out, half-alarmed but settling to ease when he sees that nobody has lost a limb. “How goes it?” He calls down. 

“Get down here, Rem, Harry—“

“I’m doing magic!” Harry shouts triumphantly as he latches onto Sirius’ exhilaration. Both Sirius and Remus lunge to quiet him, Remus decidedly more confined to only wince from four stories up while Sirius makes a quick hand gesture for secrecy.

“Be right down,” Remus says quickly before he ducks back into the flat and shuts the window solidly. Sirius turns, beaming, giddy, smeared with motor oil, back to his godson and looks around for more things to charm.

In the middle of Harry swirling a handful of leaves into a benevolent little twister, Remus emerges from the back door with a rattling cough from the burst of exertion. Sirius’ guts tighten, always flinching with the need to fix that horrible sound that’s gotten worse over the last several months, but Remus is smiling and seems to be ignoring—at least for the moment—the chaos in his lungs. 

“Is Harry Potter in my garden doing magic?” Remus declares in an excited whisper. Sirius catches his eye for the briefest flash to ask _Alright?_ The reply that glints behind Remus’ pupils is undeniably _Leave it._

“Remmy, look!” Harry glimmers with pride to show Remus the wiggly row of leaves he’s now making dance across the grass like marching ants. 

“Brilliant, absolutely brilliant,” Remus praises him through a laugh, pressing a kiss to the boy’s forehead and taking him by the hand. “Let’s do more inside the flat, alright?”

“Race you!” Harry shouts as he tears away from Remus and over to the building to tear back up the stairs. Before loping after his godson, Sirius touches at Remus’ shoulder with his mostly-unsoiled left hand. 

“Are you—“

“It’s quite fine, love,” Remus says coolly, twisting in a smooth shrug to remove Sirius’ hand and kiss his scraped knuckles. “Go after him before he accidentally charms the front door off of its hinges.”

_Quite Fine my left bollock,_ Sirius thinks to himself while his eyes flick across Remus’ face to catalogue the exhaustion there, the thin layer of fear stuffed under his neutral mask of pleasantry. He settles for quirking a smile and burying his own worries— _Burying, burying, bloody fucking burying; how fucking fortunate we’re both dogs who know how to find a bone in the dirt._

Sirius turns and runs back into the flat, up the stairs, and swoops his giggling godson into the air with a barrel of giggles. Distraction is worlds easier with these volumes of laughter to drown out the ground hum of inevitability. 

—

After another two hours, Harry has become very good at making the dishes change colors. Remus is glowing with professorial pride, testing the depth of Harry’s potential in the kitchen and the sitting room with all sorts of books, furniture, and small decorations. Harry changes it, Remus changes it back. Sirius’s insides brim with affection—he hasn’t seen Remus look so young and suffuse with abandon in months.

They’re wrapped up in charming the letters backwards in an old volume of Proust when the fireplace blazes green. All three of them look up to see James stride over the hearth.

“Indoctrinating my son into Big Boring Bollocks Books, are we?” James chides, dredging up the old school-age ribbing of Remus’ penchant for the stuff.

“Daddy, I can do magic!” Harry cries. James squints immediately, a perfect copy of the way Harry had squinted at Sirius in the courtyard. He opens his mouth to speak, but before he’s able to form words Harry points at one of the coasters on the coffee table and makes it roll across the wood floor. It bumps to a stop against James’ foot; nobody speaks for several ticks of the clock.

“Holy shit,” James finally deadpans.

Sirius breaks with laughter at the candidness and Harry joins too, causing Remus’ resolve to tumble as well as James can only continue staring at his son.

“Do _not_ repeat that to your mum,” Remus warns the boy as he stands up and runs over to his father.

“Do you like it, Daddy?” Harry asks him. James blinks a couple times before letting out a puff of breathless laughter.

“I love it!” He shouts. “I love you! You brilliant little flobberworm, I absolutely adore you!” He hoists Harry up to press a kiss to his bouncy little cheek and holds the boy against his hip. “When did this start?!”

“He was helping me with some tinkering in the courtyard,” Sirius explains, “he charmed a spanner at me when I asked for it, and that was that.”

“Merlin foaming, this is fantastic!” James laughs again with that utterly contagious note of relief and turns to Sirius and Remus, still sat on the floor against the sofa. “Thank you again for this weekend—like Lily said, we’ll find a night soon for a dinner. I—oh, man,” he trails off and grins at Harry again.

“Can we tell Mummy?” Harry asks, bouncing in his seat in James’ arm.

“Can we tell Mummy, of _course!_ She’ll crown you king of house forever, she’s going to be thrilled!” James takes up Harry’s little overnight bag that Remus had repacked this morning and left by the record player.

“Careful,” Remus pipes up, “you might never have uniformly-colored dishes again.”

James laughs, the freest sound Sirius thinks he’s ever heard from the man since his wedding day. “Worth it, bloody absolutely worth it. Ready, boyo?”

“Ta, Harry,” Sirius says, kissing his palm and waving it at Harry. Harry mimics the gesture back at him—Sirius hopes, in the pit of his stomach, that the boy will never get to old to show those who matter that he loves them like this.

“See you soon,” Remus echoes. James takes up a fist of Floo powder and backs into the fireplace.

“Thank you, honestly,” he says. “We will see you soon, give us a ring or owl tomorrow. Cheers!”

“Cheers!” Harry cries. James dashes the powder at his feet, disappearing in a blaze with a dazzling grin of success.

The sitting room is startlingly quiet without the glow of Harry’s presence.

“I’ll tidy,” Remus says, just barely on a sigh, as he stands and makes his way into the spare room. Sirius stands up as well, suddenly conscious of the grease still stuck across his hands.

“I need to put the bike away, I’ll have to finish her up tomorrow,” he calls. He returns to the courtyard and, lucky nobody else is around, is able to just charm it all back together temporarily until he can get back to work when the weather hopefully holds. Sirius looks around the courtyard for a moment as he heads back toward the building—the rose bushes, the tamped grass where he and Harry had sat, the of pebbles and leaves lying in their little pebbles and rows where they’d been left in the rush to explore more magic in the flat. His heart flexes with a strange facet of emotion that he doesn’t have a name for.

Remus is re-shelving piles of books when Sirius shuts the front door behind him. Sirius catches the slimmest sense of melancholy in a glimpse of his profile as he turns from mantle to the bookshelf, and although he feels it too he doesn’t quite feel like addressing it.

“I don’t think the Great Library of Alexandria ever burned down,” Sirius murmurs as he sidles up behind Remus, “it just fell through a wormhole and ended up here.”

“Keep watch, Mark Antony might tumble in someday soon then,” Remus hums, reaching up to push a pair of novels to on the top shelf. Sirius moves to wind his arms around Remus’ waist, but he stops himself.

“You’re going to murder me if I get oil on that jumper,” Sirius sighs as he takes a step back. Remus sniffs a dry little bolt of laughter.

“Good memory,” he says simply. The back of Sirius’ mind twinges at the tightness in the edges of Remus’ expression, but he settles for kissing the flat of Remus’ right shoulder.

“I’m for the bath, join me?” he suggests.

“I want to finish this and then put on the kettle, I will next time,” Remus says softly. Sirius heads into the bath and wishes that his cock-brain would learn more quickly these days to listen to his heart-brain and ignore the disappointment when Remus isn’t up to it.

Sirius decides to shower for alacrity’s sake, his mind relatively mute along with the hiss of the water. Remus is preoccupied by something—he was so light and unhindered with Harry, less plagued by the weight of his pain. The moon isn’t for three weeks, and yet this gloom in the sitting room right now feels more like the trough of that bullshit being only five days away. Sirius supposes, as he closes his eyes and lets the hot water pour across his face, that this is what change feels like. Fuzzy and unclear, and more than a bit uncomfortable. But this is what he signed up for. Patience to support Remus now is the side of love that has ever and continues to earn him the gift of every good day since and beyond.

Sirius shuts of the water with a heavy sigh and grabs at his towel. The sounds of the flat, muffled and amplified at once in the reflective tile cube that is the bathroom, knock around him as he slowly dries himself off; the homey percussion of Remus preparing tea in the kitchen, the ebbing drip of the shower head, the stutter of the radiator in the sitting room. Comfort comes in many shapes. Sirius stares at himself, blank and unseeing for several beats, in the fog-edged mirror. He could do well for some of that tea.

In the middle of buffing at his wet hair, Sirius’ stomach clenches strangely for a moment. He stops and listens before he realizes with a lurch that what had sounded like the sitting room radiator choking had instead come from the kitchen. He throws down the towel, races to the bathroom door and rips it open to see Remus leaning over a half-poured teacup with a hand squeezed over his mouth and an arm wrapped around his midsection in agony.

_“Oi!”_ is all Sirius can think to blurt, mind blank, heart in his throat, skidding into the kitchen with bare feet and no shirt to immediately fall to cataloguing Remus’ condition. He sees after a split second that Remus is not suffocating on his own breath, but the relief inherent is replaced quickly by a different sort of pain when Remus hiccups with a violent and tearful sob. 

“I’m going to miss it all,” Remus bawls, moving to clutch the countertop with trembling white knuckles as if it will drift away without him. “Oh God, Sirius, I’m not going to see him grow up, I can’t do this—! This isn’t fair, none of this is fair!”

Sirius’ thoughts scrape at his skull for chaotic focus. “What do you mean, what—”

“I’m dying,” Remus cries. His breath catches as if he had been punched through with an arrow, visible hysteria mounting within him as he stares blindly at his hands with tearful and dripping eyes. “I can’t go to Mungo’s to fix this, I can’t have much longer, every piece of literature, I—I can’t—I—!”

Grief rips from Remus like a roaring tide, and he wails freely into the quiet kitchen with his head hanging in resignation. Sirius’ heart shatters.

Remus sinks to the floor, still holding onto the counter, and presses his forehead against the silverware drawer in front of him for several racking cries. Sirius drops to his knees to gather Remus into his arms, and he holds the other man tightly while the immediacy of it all crashes through him. 

“I’m not ready, Sirius, I don’t want to die!” Remus weeps. His breath is sticky with tears as he hyperventilates against Sirius’ chest, and Sirius holds him closer as though nothing but his arms could stave off Fate herself. He feels his own panic escape in tears, but he presses his face into Remus’ hair and does his best to lull him. Remus clings to Sirius as he begins to rock with sobs, his fingers pushing against Sirius’ skin as if to remind himself he hasn’t left yet, he’s still here, all of this is still real. 

“I don’t want you to die,” Sirius admits in agreement. His voice, thick with pain, skips over a catch of tears, and Remus pulls him closer in wordless response as he continues sobbing.

Sirius has never seen him so manic, not even when Frank and Alice were killed. This is primal—shouting, furious desolation, the result of months of feeling the descent but trying to push it to the outskirts of reality and replace the wandering thoughts while time continues to tick on under the surface. There is only so much space to fill with distraction before the present barrels in on the heels of the final straw. 

“I’m right here,” Sirius assures him, holding Remus so dearly he can feel the hammer of the man’s heart against his own ribs. “I’m right here, I’m so sorry Remus. I’m right here.”

“I can’t do it, I can’t leave you!” Remus insists automatically. Sirius pulls back and tips Remus’ face up to meet his eyes. The normally-brilliant green is dull, plagued by misery, and ringed with an angry red that somehow hurts Sirius’ heart more than even the yellow madness of the wolf. 

“You will _never_ leave me,” Sirius vows with ferocity, his voice sharpened with conviction like a blade beneath his own tears. “You—promised me that you were mine ‘until you die and even then,’ _this_ is even then,” he chokes out. The ring on his finger aches heavily as molten steel on his finger. “What we have does not leave with you, Remus. It leaves with the last of either of us, even if I have to go on for seventy more bloody fucking years without you.”

Remus squeezes his eyes shut, pushing out a fall of tears, and fights for breath around agony. “I don’t want to go,” his manages to whisper.

Sirius ignores the instinct to tell him it will all be okay. Life has reminded them again and again ever since they were boys that pacification will never be anything but a lie that leaves one stranded. But _Fucking hellfire and the almighty end,_ Sirius wants nothing more in this moment than to believe that lie. 

“You’re not leaving yet,” Sirius assures him, lame and raw-voiced and clammy with tears on their kitchen floor. Remus’ lungs shudder with each of his inhales as he fights for control of his own air. Sirius wants to tear the very earth apart from its mantle. 

“I just—I can’t,” Remus rambles with abraded Odyssean effort. He pushes himself back into Sirius’ chest, trembling as another wave of despair racks him—quieter, but just as deep. His voice is in tatters around another sob when he speaks again after a moment; “Just hold me. Please.”

And so it seems that life is the one puzzle that Sirius’ wits can’t guide him out of with a mostly-spotless record, so carried through childhood and academics and most things beyond. The cosmic joke of his existence will culminate in the end of the only thing that matters, this quiet and beautiful life built together away from the noise of the world at large. The two of them will doubtless have to duel with the weight of this tragedy over and over again for however long Remus has left. The best he can do now, Sirius thinks to himself as Remus comes to grips with his own reality, is be strong.

Sirius Black has never felt less like a lion in his entire life. 

**Author's Note:**

> Amidst moving into a new building and work and all things in between, I've found time over the last (far too long ahhhh) stretch to get this one done! I so wanted to have a Tiny Harry's Big Adventure part to this series, and I finally found a place to put it :> Things are ramping up for these boys. Big nerve-wracking strange ball of the unknown. Thank you so much again for reading, I'm so happy to have you all pass through to share these stories with me <3


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